Re: C++... is it dying?
puzzlecracker <ironsel2000@gmail.com> wrote:
I have recently started a new job, and to my surprise, we still
write a fairly traditional c++ code, still using raw pointers, and
still in market with our products.
How popular is this scenario?
What's the future for C++, other than ceasing years of
maintainance?
Will new standardization create new markets for c++ developers and
applications, will it expand the application domain?
All I have to go on is my own personal experience. When I got my first
programming job back in '98, I was genuinely concerned that my sketchy
knowledge of the STL was going to make things difficult for me. As it
turned out, my knowledge of the STL was already much greater than
anybody else in the company! I found myself routinely having to
demonstrate how the standard containers were more efficient than any
home-grown solution any of the "old guard" could come up with.
I'm working on my 10th year with the company and over the years, the STL
has fallen completely by the way-side. Principally because the owners
(both programmers themselves) learned everything they ever would about
programming long before I ever met them. The company had a vector, list
and string implementation long before the STL existed and the owners
have a severe case of NIH (Not invented here.)
Meanwhile, the company has hired a bunch of programmers fresh out of
college who learned C++ "from the ground up", i.e., they know more about
raw pointers and loops than containers and algorithms.
On top of that, the people I work with view programming as a job, a
means to an end, not a passion or hobby, so their willingness to learn
something more than they already know is practically nonexistent.
.... Before I start sounding "holier than thou" I have to say, I learned
C++ when the STL was touted as the best thing since sliced bread, I
spent a lot of time learning how to use the functional library and
building up my own library of adaptors and predicates. Now, I hear that
boost's lambda library is going to become part of the standard but
frankly I doubt I will ever learn it (or any of the other new parts of
the standard) as well as I know the STL.